Rub It In: MySpace Layoff Letter Rubs Salt in Wound

Amidst the fairy tale of a year for Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook crew, with all their due success, one of the internet’s breakthrough social media sites in MySpace, has thus seen its worth and future even, spiral down the drain accordingly. After witnessing its estimated dollar amount disappear by the millions, the groundbreaking media company has recently laid off approximately 500 persons, accounting for roughly half of its employees.

As if a layoff in and of itself isn’t degrading enough, MySpace CEO Mike Jones (no, not the rapper) issued a farewell letter to each of his former employees. While the gesture may have been created with the sincerest of intentions in mind, it undoubtedly came across callused and ho hum.

A disgruntled, former patron under Jones was evidently rubbed the wrong way by the received statements and sent a copy of the letter to TechCrunch. It reads:

“Although we can’t continue on this journey together–I hope you will all stay connected with MySpace and know that your contribution to the business was a unique moment in time and that you participated in something that few have been part of in our industry.”

Continue to use MySpace? Thanks for your help during a “unique moment”? Now I’m no technical worker or code conjurer by any means, but I do however, minimally understand how tedious and demanding that line of work is. To make light of said time spent with any organization by any given means basically comes off as heartless and leaves it as if you had no intentions of keeping these employees on your payroll for an extended period of time anyway. It pretty much sounds like, “Thanks for all your hard work for those couple of key years and oh by the way, make sure to keep me on your top eight.”

I’m sure Mr. Jones is merely aggravated, jealous, and possibly a bit humiliated at just how Facebook has continually managed to upgrade and stay relevant after many years of its operation. Maybe you and Tom need to step your game up, buddy.